Founders exit redBus; Sangam new CEO

The founders of online bus ticketing firm redBus, have exited the company, with new faces replacing them.

Chief Executive Officer Phanindra Sama and fellow co-founder Charan Kumar Raju, who headed engineering at the company, have already handed over their responsibilities.

Sama's exit comes a year after Bangalore-based redBus was acquired by the Naspers-backed Ibibo Group. Ibibo had acquired an 80 per cent stake in redBus for $101 million in June last year. Prakash Sangam, has been appointed the new chief executive of redBus, according to a company statement.

Ibibo has also appointed Rohan Patnaik as head of supply and operations and Anoop Menon as head of engineering function at redBus.

Till recently, Sangam was the executive vice president at Infoedge India Ltd (Naukri Group), heading two portfolio businesses of the group namely, Shiksha.com and jeevansathi.com. He built Shiksha.com from the ground-up and drove it to a leadership position in the education marketplace category.

He was part of the Naukri Group for over five years. Sangam also had a stint with Airtel as general manager, marketing and innovation. Prior to that, he spent seven years with Hindustan Unilever in multiple roles spanning marketing, brand management and sales.

Rohan Patnaik is an alumnus of IIM, Lucknow and a B Tech from IIT Mumbai. He started his career at Unilever and worked there for five years in operational roles in supply chain and sales. He also worked at Colorplus as the head of retail and then in Diageo, managing the P&L for their largest region (South India).

Anoop Menon moved to redBus last year from Ibibo, after the acquisition, as CTO of the consumer facing business. He will now take charge of the entire engineering function of redBus including redbus.in, BOGDS (cus operator facing platform) and SeatSeller (agent facing platform).

Menon was part of the founding team of Ibibo and managed various technology functions during the build- up of the group.